My Weekly Writing Assignment

So I caught a little flack for being predictable last week. I always write about my past, my memories, etc. However, what the commenter doesn't know is that I'm horrible with creativity. I took a Fiction Writing course in college and never wrote a fictitious story. I took stories that actually happened, changed the names, and submitted it. I swung a B in the class. So I'm sorry if it's disappointing to some, but with my weekly writing assignment, I'm going to be predictable yet again. Here are the prompts, though, if you're interested:

1.) You awaken with amnesia in what looks to be an igloo. You have $4 and a rock in one pocket, and a toothbrush in the other. Someone is staring at you. Write this scene.

2.) Write a 16-line poem (rhyming or non-rhyming) about a moment from your childhood that changed your life for the better.

3.) You're sitting at work one day and receive a text message from an unrecognized number. The text says, "I have the money and hid the body." You think this is a practical joke from a friend, so you play along at first. But the more texts you receive, the more you realize that it isn't a joke. Write the text conversation you have with this unknown texter.

4.) 10 of my absolute worst pet peeves...

5.) Fictionalize an event that happened to one of your parents, friends, or siblings.

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10 of My Absolute Worst Pet Peeves

10. Nonsensical arguments. Don't pick a fight with me, or try to debate me, if you have no basis for your side of the debate. You'll end up plucking total nonsense, seemingly out of thin air, and try to sling it at me like a fireball. You end up sounding incredibly stupid and I've got nothing because I can't argue with stupidity.

9. Dog-earing pages of books. My husband is totally guilty of this and it drives me up the damn wall. I don't care if it's our book, the library's or someone else's. You DON'T dog-ear pages! Preserve the damn book! Use a slip of paper, a string, or - here's a novel idea - a bookmark.

8. The fact that the California Drivers License Handbook comes in nine different languages-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
. This is AMERICA! Did you know that until 2006, we didn't have an official language? It's absolutely absurd to me that people are allowed to take their driver's license exams in one of 8 other languages - aside from English - and get their license. Of course, that brings me to Pet Peeve #7.

7. That one can become a legal citizen of the United States of America and not want to embrace our language and culture. It's infuriating that there are people out there who simply want to make money here, send it back to their home country for years at a time, and the whole time they're here, bitch about America. "America sucks, Vietnam's great!" is a tune Rob hears at work all the time. Yeah, but the money you make here, that's no so bad, eh? The guy who chants his America Sucks Mantra every day also dragged an animal trap into work one day. Rob asks him, "Hey [name here], what's the trap for?" The response: "Cats." Yeah.

6. Maintenance staff, mechanics (other than my hubby, of course), and any man I deal with in the general public assuming I'm a complete idiot and treating me like one. The maintenance guy I get up here every time something in our apartment needs fixed automatically thinks I broke whatever he's fixing and that I'm just some dumb woman. I'm not stupid, I know how/why/when it broke and how to not break it again. Jackass. My hoo-ha doesn't knock 40 points off my IQ.

5. The gap in between my two front teeth. I had it before I got braces in 1992. The braces I wore through 1994 closed it. Then I got lazy about wearing my retainer and by the time I was 19, it was back. Now I have a gap that food gets stuck in constantly. So if I'm eating, and I make a disgusting thhhhhhtttt sound, you know why.

4. Parents that refuse to restrain or even watch their kids in public places, namely stores and restaurants. There is nothing more irritating than trying to do your shopping or lunch-gnoshing while there are small children running around, screaming, knocking things off of shelves with nary a parent or guardian to be found. Who lets their kids run wild? Don't they worry about kidnapping? Or even something so simple as their kid breaking something and them being forced to buy it? Aye yi yi! WATCH YOUR KIDS! I've taken three children under three years old to a store before, it's not asking too much, I swear.

3. Holy Rollers. Bible thumpers. Soldiers of God. I don't have a problem with your Christianity. Believe what you want to believe, you won't hear a peep out of me because that's the beauty and whole premise of America: your freedom of religion. In that same vein, I enjoy the freedom of not having to believe in any deity or dogma, so please stop waving your bible in my face, stop reciting passages from it, and stop telling me that all of life's answers are in it. The bible is your cheat sheet. If you need a bunch of mostly-fictitious stories to answer life's tough questions or you need a printed and bound moral compass, then by all means. But it's not mine and you can't force-feed Christianity. Besides, what about the Golden Rule? My religious beliefs, or lack thereof, shouldn't be a factor, right?

2. The reset time on my digital camera. I get my kids all set for a second picture, or I get the perfect smile on someone, and then they have to wait for the damn thing to reset. By then, I've lost that wonderful smile, nobody's looking at the camera, and the moment's over. I need this camera in my life. Seriously.

1. Opportunists. I'm not talking about my husband, although he is an excellent example of an opportunists. I'm talking about people who know you're relying on them for something and take every opportunity to use you. Rob and I have this happen to us time and again and it's really very frustrating. We never want to slight people and we're both helpers: we help even when we really can't or shouldn't. It's a compulsion, really. Anyway, we're often taken advantage of and it starts to suck. You want to believe in people, you know?

"I Love Being Married..."

...says Rita Rudner. "It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life."

How true is that?! A while back, a certain lady in Canada asked her readers to blog about what makes them just a little hard to love. I obliged, and now I want to turn the tables.

"My husband and I have never considered divorce. Murder, maybe...but never divorce." - Joyce Brothers

1. He couldn't hit a clothes basket or hamper with his dirty clothes if he were standing inside the basket. He'll get undressed in one spot - never moving his feet except to kick off pants and socks - and leave his clothes in perfect formation around where his feet were. Every night, I pick up a pile of pants and two balled-up socks (balled up, of course, because he toed them off).

2. He chews tobacco. Okay, I guess in Tobaccoese, he actually dips snuff but that sounds like he's doing some sort of illicit drug. He used to chew Copenhagen and now, due to the extreme price of tobacco in California, he chews Grizzly Wintergreen. You can't imagine the stink of that stuff. And the spitters!!!! You haven't lived until your husband has run out of spitters and begins using empty Diet Coke cans - which YOU get to empty before you recycle them. Want to get even more squeamish? Have a spitter spill on you.

3. He will not shut up about motorcycle clubs. The 801, the Mongols, the Hell's Angels...the Red & White is his club of choice. He's bent on being associated with them in some form, if not becoming a member. He reads up on them, especially about Sonny Barger, and jabbers like a monkey in a damn tree about them. Now don't get your panties in a twist and be all "Oooh, bikers are bad. Motorcycle gangs are bad. Your husband's a bad man." Huh-uh. We've established that should this ever materialize for him - and if I'm being honest, I doubt it ever will - that it will not have any impact on who he is at home or affect his relationship with me and the kids. He knows how much I'm willing to tolerate and where his loyalty needs to lie. If there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's to be nobody's doormat and to BE the squeaky wheel...and to accept nothing less than what I deserve.

4. He is forever HOT. While I do find my husband very attractive, I literally mean his internal thermostat must be broken. It's 60F outside, all of our windows are open, the ceiling fan is running at full tilt, he's wearing cotton shorts and a Hanes undershirt...and sweating. I'm wearing cotton shorts, a regular t-shirt, a wool blanket, and a hoodie and I'm cold. Obviously, he's in the wrong here. He can't possibly be hot. Right?

5. As a result of #4, he refuses to sleep upstairs in our loft bedroom until it's c-o-l-d outside. I think he's waiting for a frost or something. We've spent maybe a total of 30 nights in our bed. Otherwise, we're sleeping on our obscenely big and massively uncomfortable sectional. Oh, and our son is all cramped up in his pack 'n play which, at this age, is more of a jail cell while mommy cooks or runs to the bathroom than it is a suitable bed. I wish I could stuff a portable crib mattress in there so he could be a bit more comfortable but those damn warning labels are everywhere, all about the suffocation risks and whatnot, making me nine kinds of paranoid. He's 11 months old and it's mesh-sided. How much suffocation could happen? But as we know, I'm a stickler for the rules.

6. He has an almost obscene loyalty to the company he works for. He's been there for just over five years and honestly, they probably should have fired him by now. Not for anything really bad. He's never lied, stolen, sabotaged, nothing like that. But he's accidentally broken a few very expensive parts and botched a few very important jobs that, if his boss had a bug up his ass and took a notion, could have been cause for termination. Anyway, he keeps talking about finding a new job but when one's offered, he finds 100 different reasons he shouldn't take it.

7. He won't listen to anything but country and classic rock music. I'm trying to branch out into the world of rock again, at least the more adult stuff, as well as people like Michael Buble, Josh Groban, etc. But every time he gets in the car and I drove it last, he gets all butt-hurt because a station that isn't country is on.

8. He makes me call the nurse advice line for him. He has back pain, spots in his vision, a cough, and I'm the one calling them. He knows damn well they won't offer any advice to me, that they need to talk to him because of confidentiality and all that, but he still insists that I call. I also need to go to doctors' appointments with him because he starts stuttering when he has to describe symptoms.

9. His infuriating incredible ability to tune everything except the TV out. I'm telling him something life-altering and he's off somewhere in the twilight zone, watching "Sons of Anarchy" or one of his MSNBC specials on motorcycle clubs and infiltrations by the FBI that he's DVRd. He won't hear a word.

10. The above-mentioned television shows. He's hooked on SoA and has watched those two news specials at least a dozen times each. He's such a nerd about being a biker! It's cute, really, but more annoying. We have books written by bikers (including three by Sonny Barger), a subscription to Easyrider, movies, and a friend at work who's treasurer of a club in San Jose. The man needs a new hobby. I almost miss his obsession with golfing. Almost.

So tell me about your partner in crime. What do they do that gets under your skin? Hook up with Mr. Linky and let me know!